an poem

[ewt]

DISCO DANCERS
Mildred Rose


We are all, all of us dancers
dancing on the thin edge of time.
At the disco, strobe lights flash,
shred shadows, splatter blood,
viscous-green, icy blue, violent purple
on walls, bodies (eyes, thighs, nubile breasts
bare backs, shoulders, spangled costumes)
sequins, tigress burning bright.

Refrain unceasing, beat, beat, beat,
go, go, go on, on, on,
dance disco, dance disco
beat, beat, beat--

Movement of feet exorcising mind,
contorted bodies, each born dying
knowing only the whiplash of the dance.
(beat, beat, beat)
Dance negating identitis
in simulated womb-dark-dark safety--
flash, flash, dance, dance.

Mother, child, flash, flash
ashes to ashes, dance disco dancers dance.
Memories sanguine, afterbirth of dreams, swords swish,
another head rolls, body leaps, time unending ends,
crowds cheer, worms invade apples, nuclear wastes
clog streams, Neutron-bombs -- holy, holy, holy!
Children swollen-bellied, fly-infested,
starving, dead -- fortunate dead? Dead?

Call the holy ones -- call God the Father, lifegiving sun,
discus-bearing Vishnu, great Agni, imperturbable Buddha
(under a rose-apple tree, rice bowl empty) Call, call,
dance, dance. Call high-totemed thunderbird scowling,
vulnerable-heeled Krishna, Judean Lion, roaring
triple-natured Nagas from the salt seas, divine
wisdom, holy whore of Babylon -- Hagia Sophia.

Call, call, who answers, answers?
Comes the slinking alley cat,
comes the retching drunk,
comes the adulterer,
comes horror, horror,
welded, inseperable from self --
dance, dance, in cathedral gloom
censers swing, sickening the air
in cold womb -- dark haven
of oak and brass
where none dance.

Believing or unbelieving,
we hear the rush of wings,
the final word moaning
in darkness -- dance, dance,
beat, beat, beat, disco dancers,
dance. All dancers, all of us,
dancers on the sharp thin edge
of time.